People

The Institute was made up of a wide range of talented and dedicated scientists, technicians, engineers and support staff. This page tells you about their work and about the lighter side of life at Wormley.

Contents of this page• Fellows of the Royal Society• Oral histories recorded by Wormley scientists• Personal accounts of peoples working lives John Moorey Bob Wallace Bob Belderson Colin Pelton• International Indian Ocean Expedition –Discovery Reunions • Memories of John Wilson• Sports and social

Among the people who worked at the Wormley laboratory several were awarded the highest accolade of British science, Fellowship of the Royal Society. The obituaries of those who have died can be found on the web site of the Royal Society.

Wormley, IOS and group W staff elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society

* Biographical memoir available free of charge from the Royal Society until 2015 and then from Peter Herring.

Oral historiesOral histories recorded by scientists who worked at Wormley, David Cartwright, Jim Crease, Tony Laughton, Norman Smith and John Woods have been recorded by the British Library.The Royal Meteorological Society also holds an interview with John Swallow made shortly before his death.

Personal accountsHere we provide links to PDF files with personal anecdotes about aspects of their working lives by Wormley people.There are contributions byJohn Moorey "Ashore and afloat",Bob Wallace "My first cruise", Bob Belderson "Two vessels off the Amazon and one in the Caribbean"Colin Pelton "The Heath Robinson Guide to Anamorphics"We would welcome your contributions to post on this site.

Informal and formal views of life on RRS Discovery in the IIOE 1962-4

International Indian Ocean Expedition –Discovery Reunions

Peter Herring November 2017On June 1st 1963 RRS Discovery sailed from Plymouth on her maiden science cruise, providing the main UK contribution to the International Indian Ocean Expedition. Cruises 1, 2 and 3, focusing on biology, geology and geophysics, and physical oceanography respectively, ended with her return in September 1964(Refs 1,2). If subsequent cruises had been of similar duration, her last one before retirement (D382) would have taken place about 150 years later!Forty years on and a burst of nostalgia prompted me to see whether there was an appetite for a reunion. Indeed there was. Despite the loss of many of the more senior members of the original party, both scientific and shipside, we were still able to contact 52 colleagues and shipmates and, with the help of John Jones (University College London), arranged a lunch on June 11th 2003 for 29 of us at the Naval Club in Mayfair,( Ref 3). It was a very convivial and nostalgic event, with photos of yesteryear, and we decided to reconvene as best we could in 5 years’ time. So it was that on July 4th 2008 a group of 23 IIOE veterans enjoyed another lunch at the Naval Club and jointly determined that the 50th anniversary should not go unmarked. June 20th 2013 thus provided a slightly more structured celebration of the Golden Anniversary at the same venue. The event began with a film taken by Maurice Hill on Cruise 2 and a display of photographs and other memorabilia, followed by lunch for our group of 25 and a talk about the IIOE by Tony Laughton. Would we meet again? Of course we would, but 5 years now seemed a somewhat risky wait and, prompted by Graham Topping and again organised so efficiently by John Jones, a 54th anniversary lunch took place on September 21st this year (2017). Remarkably we were still able to muster 24 of our number, including Peter Brewer for the first time from Monterey. An excellent lunch, with much banter and retelling (accurately??) of some of the events of 1963 and ’64, was of course also the occasion for a heartfelt toast to absent friends. Now in our senior years, we all remember those who are no longer with us, but for Phil Roberts D.S.O., our erstwhile 3rd mate and subsequently captain of Sir Galahad in the Falklands it must always be a particularly poignant toast.Will we meet again? I hope so, but we may need a shorter interval to maintain a quorum!1.Laughton, A.S. (2004) IIOE: recollections of the International Indian Ocean Expedition. Ocean Challenge, 13, no.1, 18-24.2. Herring, P.J. (2012) RRS Discovery and the IIOE cruises; when oceanography came of age. Ocean Challenge,19, no.2, 38-43.3. Herring, P.J. (2004) Life on Discovery…..forty years ago. Ocean Challenge,13, no.1, p.17.These article can be downloaded from http://www.challenger-society.org.uk/Article_Search

Memories of John Wilson 24 July 1938 – 8 October 2017 By Colin Pelton, November 2017

Picture the scene – it’s the 1960s and an impressionable young man seated in a cinema is watching that iconic scene from Doctor No in which Ursula Andress walks out of the sea with a nice pair of conch shells. A lone voice in the stalls rings out - "Look at those Strombus gigas[1]!" I suspect the only time that phrase has ever been uttered during a Bond movie - perhaps any movie. John's passion for anything connected to marine carbonates was overriding.

News of John’s funeral prompted many to respond with wonderful stories about him - all fondly remembered. My earliest recollections of John were in the early 1970s when during long passages of appalling weather on unsuitable research vessels off the north-west coast of Scotland he regaled us with, often self - deprecating, tales of his life.

John’s early work on the Solway Firth featured in his funeral tributes: what wasn’t mentioned was that one of his field trips involved digging a deep cross-section across the tidal flats. He stood in the bottom of the trench pointing to one of the lower layers and explaining this was probably deposited in the last Ice Age whereupon, to the delight of his students, a glass model of the Eiffel Tower fell out of the sediment. This model had pride of place on the shelf in John’s office. Along, of course, with his troublesome kneecap which had been removed and pickled in a jar of formalin.

My favourite recollection of John at Wormley, was his laboratory re-creation of a submersible dive in Vickers Pisces III in 1973. In searching for a lost IMER[2] undulator the submersible had taken video records of the seabed and, lacking accurate vehicle navigation, John wanted to assess the speed of the submersible moving over the seabed using the video footage as reference. The answer was simple: turn the top corridor into a dive simulator. The seafloor (linoleum tiles) was decorated with accurately sized cardboard starfish; the stores' trolley became the submersible and the viewing porthole was a cardboard box with a hole cut in it. The principal scientist, i.e. John, put the box over his head, lay on the trolley while I pushed him along the corridor at varying speeds (floor tiles per second). This enabled John to examine the video record and establish the submersible speed over the ground: casual observers of this experiment still talk of little else.

John's infectious enthusiasm during sampling expeditions not only transmitted itself to his scientific support but also to the ship’s crew. Many hands came on deck to help unload the samples from his beloved Smith McIntyre sediment grab or bottom sampling dredge. On one cruise somebody (investigations still ongoing) planted a rogue specimen into the dredge as it was being recovered. The sight and sound of John leaping forward shouting "good heavens, what's that!?" as he pulled a well-cooked pork sausage from the dredge sample was a delight. After careful examination John insisted it was bottled and labelled, and as far as I know it is still somewhere in our collections. In following years, discoveries of extensive cold water corals and iceberg ploughmarks were to define John’s scientific career. Thanks to John I can still spot a piece of Lophelia prolifera at a hundred paces and it was entirely fitting that a specimen accompanied him on his way.

We may have seen a great deal of the UK’s more inhospitable waters on his cruises, but en route John always took time to show us the wonders of the Scottish Isles – from St Kilda to the Hebrides, Orkneys and Shetlands, and out to Rockall and beyond – we visited some extraordinary places. John will be sadly missed by all who were lucky enough to work and sail with him. I’ve gathered a small selection of photos I took of John at work, rest and play – I’m sure there are many others ...[1] Strombus Gigas, the Queen or pink Conch[2] NERC Institute for Marine Environmental Research (IMER)

From early days NIO always had a social element, which demonstrated the closeness of the staff, and this spirit developed over the years, eventually spawning the Social Club. Since there were a significant number of young staff sporting prowess came to the forefront and a cricket team was formed. It played midweek matches against local village teams, from other local organisations and teams of masters from nearby schools. As local sport evolved the Wormley-based team joined the Division 2 of the Farnham Midweek Cricket League playing home matches on King Edwards School pitches next to the labs.

The league was ground-breaking, playing 20 over cricket long before the professional teams adopted the format. What made the matches inclusive was the rule that required each team to use six different bowlers. Since few teams had that many bowlers, this rule brought out the captain’s skill of deciding when to use the expertise of batsman and bowler, trying to frustrate the opposition’s best batsman with the bowlers variability and trying to get the higher scoring batsmen against the oppositions weaker bowlers. There were some famous examples of these tactics being successful. On one occasion an opposition batsman complained about being bowled two successive wides. He was then bowled out middle stump in the first three balls of a match.

The matches were short and sharp, with the tactics designed to beat the fading light, but most of all to get to the bar for the evening’s main social event.

Achievements were about fun, winning was not paramount, it was all about being together with your colleagues. The nearest we reached to cricketing success was reaching the final of the Farnham league at Aldershot Park.

More reminisciences of Wormley sports Pam Draper (Edwards) January 2016The NIO Hockey team played two or three matches against a mixed team from King Edward's School, "mixed" meaning male and female staff and pupils, I think. It was probably in the late 1950s but might have been a bit later.

I seem to remember that James Crease was the NIO's star attacker, being quick and dextrous, though Michael Longuet-Higgins was pretty fast too; I was amused to see Michael stuffing copies of the Times newspaper down insidehis long socks to act as shin guards - very wise. Henry Charnock was a solid defender, helped by Pam Edwards and others, and we had a brilliant goalie, Brian Barry (Commander, ex NZ Navy) who, although with only one hand, wasformidable. I think John Cherriman replaced Brian as goalie after Brian left us, and he too was great. Roland Cox played mid-field, I think, as did Margaret Deacon? and Anne Bristow from Main Office.